Not quite what I was hoping for.
That was the quote that first made my ears perk up about this game. I now can't remember where it came from, but it almost instantly had my attention.
I played the demo, start to finish, and was honestly unimpressed. But, with it being a demo, I thought, "hey, give it a chance..sometimes the demo doesn't do the game justice". So, I went out on Tuesday, picked up the game, and brought it home for a marathon session.
My "marathon" didn't last longer than two hours.
I combat is quite pretty and enjoyable. I can safely say that it is one of the best 3rd person RPG combat systems I've come across in recent years.
But, unfortunately, the bucks stops there, for me at least.
Special FX can't carry a mediocre movie, and good combat can't carry a mediocre game.
The quests are extremely generic which, in this day and age of Dragon Age, Skyrim, Fable, and others, can become EXTREMELY boring after only a few quest completions.
The dialogue system, unfortunately, doesn't hold a candle to the likes of some of EAs other titles (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, etc.), which just winds up making it feel like it was cobbled together rather hastily.
The story, while potentially intriguing, doesn't feel cohesive enough to guide you in the right direction. After the initial introduction, I felt a bit like a toddler who had been tossed in an enormous sandbox and then left there by some uninterested parents. Ideally, that shouldn't be a problem, as you should just be able to wander off in any direction and find something to do. Only this game left me feeling kind of like the developers were saying, "oh, go do what you want...we don't care", instead of, "yes!...go play in our world...discover!"
In the end, I really, really, REALLY wanted to like this game. I still do; I keep fighting the urge to take it back to the store for trade-in credit, hoping that I'll find SOMETHING to interest me. But, I still can't help that shoulder-shrug, "meh" feeling everytime I look at it.